An ongoing mystery in the D.C. teachers' contract negotiations has been exactly which private philanthropies have promised schools chancellor Michelle Rhee millions of dollars to fund her aggressive proposed merit pay plan. The program, if enacted, would supposedly allow teachers to earn up to $130,000 annually in exchange for giving up one year of tenure. A FOIA request for Rhee's schedule, made by the Washington City Paper, now confirms what many edu-wonks have long guessed: that Bill Gates and real-estate mogul Eli Broad are likely behind the D.C. reform plan. Rhee met with the Gates Foundation 10 times since June 2007, and with the Broad foundation 11 times. She also had 8 contacts with the New Schools Venture Fund, which supports public charter schools such as the KIPP network, as well as the for-profit Edison schools. And sure to be controversial in Democratic D.C., Rhee also met multiple times with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, run by a Reagan administration vet, and with the Walton Family Foundation, the Wal-Mart family's charity, which has focused on school "accountability" efforts. None of this is particularly surprising, considering Rhee's history as the founder of the New Teacher Project, an entrepreneurial, union-skeptic organization supported by some of these same philanthropies. But the City Paper's digging serves as a reminder of the ideological commitments of those who are supporting Rhee's reform efforts. --Dana Goldstein
